What, Where, and How: Using WebWatcher® to Better Understand the Digital Lives of Youth

• In Event: 26.080 - Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: 26.080-9 - Innovative Techniques and Methods for Qualitative Research

Abstract

Media and technology are seen as the embodiment of social and cultural relationships that shape and structure social action and expression. Understanding today’s youth requires understanding how digital technologies form the foundations of their on- and offline social practices. Drawing on a multimodal framework this study illustrates how commercially available remote monitoring software such as WebWatcher® can temporarily provide access to the digitally lived experiences of low SES urban youth. WebWatcher® provided access to participants’ text messages, web searches, social networks, phone call log, emails, photos, and video. This provided insight into how mobile devices were routinely used as well as the level and the type, intensity, modes, mediums, and ways in which meaning was made in various contexts.

Author

• Martha Joanne Hoff, University of Rochester